Former Clinton Advisors Praises Economic Turnaround Under Trump

Political commentator and former Clinton administration adviser Dick Morris praised the direction the American economy is moving in under President Donald Trump.

“We’re getting more and more evidence, good news, about a major economic turnaround under President Trump,” Morris said last week in a video posted to his website.

Morris noted that the changes are happening despite the lack of a successful Obamacare repeal, a stimulus package or any kind of major legislation.

Morris, who served as a White House adviser while Bill Clinton was president, emphasized positive first and second-quarter economic growth numbers.

“In the first quarter the economy grew by one-and-half percent. In the second quarter it grew by 2.6 percent,” he said.

According to the Commerce Department, the second-quarter growth was driven in large part by stronger consumer spending.

Overall economic growth is well under Trump’s campaign-trail promise of four percent, but it is getting closer to the goal of three percent he set once he took office, CNNMoney reported.

Morris noted that profits for S&P companies were up 15 percent in the first quarter and 11 percent in the second quarter, numbers he claimed have not been seen in years.

The former White House adviser concluded that the previous administration did several things wrong that held back the economy.

Obama “flooded the country with money in the hopes that some of it would stick and would stimulate some economic growth,” Morris said. He cited the “headwinds that (Obama) imposed on the economy” through climate change regulations.

The business climate was made so adverse by the Obama administration, Morris said, that money was “stuffed under the mattress,” and “nobody spent it, lent it or invested it.”

But Trump’s loosening of regulations led to “an unfreezing of the economic climate” and a “changed attitude” among those in finance, manufacturing and mining who sensed that they are “not going to be mouse-trapped” by new regulations.

He also said that Trump’s trade negotiations have improved the U.S. trade balance substantially.

“The danger is that there is probably some inflation around the corner, he said. “There’s a lot of money out there, floating around, and it will be hard for the feds to sop it up.”

Morris’s warning appeared to echo that of former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan.

Greenspan said in February that America “cannot afford” a Trump-endorsed infrastructure spending spree or other fiscal policies that might cause the U.S. economy to overheat.

Morris told his viewers to “cut him (Trump) some slack on all the nonsense going in Washington,” adding that Trump’s steady stream of executive orders, as well as congressional actions to repeal regulations, “are having a tremendously positive effect.”